Crossing the Bolivian Border

October 16, 2024 - From the itinerary:

Leave Explora Atacama at 8am and drive to the Bolivian border which will take abut an hour.

After the border you will meet your new guides/car and continue on through the Edwardo Abaroa national park to the White Lagoon, then on to the Green Lagoon. Drive on to the Dali dessert and on to the Pollques Lagoon before arriving at the geysers

We will stop for lunch along the way.

Our final lagoon is the Colorado Lagoon which ends our 360 km travel day to Ramaditas.

Weather about 13 degrees C, sunny and windy - 40-60mph gusts.

Leaving Atacama getting ready for

Another colosal screw up- a)sharing a car and b) different times of departure. They knew there was 1 car yesterday so they must have known the correct departure time - that said - we were told 8am and the other couple was 7;30. We had to sit in the back seat of a 6 seater 4WD, no window and and without enough room for luggage. Something kept hitting me in the head. The Brazilians had 4 big cases, while we had 2 small ones.

Along the way we stopped at the volcano viewing point

We got to the Chilean exit point at 8;45 and there were 10 cars in front of us. We finally got to the building at 9:30 and no one was behind us. I guess we could have left an hour later. Chris and I spent the time standing by the side of the road and found this disturbing sign….

There was another 20 minutes drive to the Bolivian border where we lost an hour and we were met by Elsa and Hebert.

Hebert is married with children and lives in Uyuni City.

Elsa from Uyuni City. She is bout 40 years old (although she looks much younger) with 3 children. Her oldest is a daughter - 20 - a son 14 and a youngest son is 9. Her oldest is going to university in Uyuni City, studying tourism. Elsa has a Bachelor of Arts degree with a focus on language. She is fluent in both English and French, as well as her native Spanish and Quechua. We saw her brother who is also a tour guide and working for another tour operator.

Clearing the customs formalities at the Bolivian Border took all of 2 minutes. I was very glad I went through all the trouble to get the visa in London. There were horror stories of being held hostage at the boarder and paying money if documents were missing or not in hard copy.

My initial impressions of Bolivia: much less developed than Chile, and other South American Countries. The people are very nice. Most toilets are on par with third world (e.g. paper into the trash and use a scoop to put water in the toilet tank).

It felt very isolated. Roads are really only guidelines and there are no gas stations, so our Lexus had several extra Jerry cans lashed to the roof. If a traveler has a problem, they will only help if a car rom the same company comes by or if they are willing to pay a lot. So we got a Bolivian massage whenever driving and the main roads were worse than moving "off-road".

We saw several bicyclists a long the way who are in training for extreme trips. Chris says they are French. They use the same areas to drive (I won’t call them roads) and camp.- They carry all their provisions, including food and water. Doesn’t seem like a fun hobby.

Not long after leaving passport control we had to register at the national park - so 3 stops in total to continue on our way (exit Chile, enter Bolivia and pass the military checkpoint to register for the national park)

Our first stop was the White Lagoon which had some James Flamingos and was a fun place to admire the reflections.

This and the Green Lagoon were at the base of the Licancabur Volcano. Explora offers expeditions that go to the top (16,000 feet) - starting at 4am and returning the same day. We declined doing this…but it is very popular with the French. The Green Lagoon is also very beautiful and the color is derived from algae.

We had a stop along the way to see the desert - it could be right out of a Dali painting.

and a stop at a geyser field. The cool thing about this area is that you can go right up to the bubbling geysers, so very unsafe and very interesting.

Everyday the wind comes up at noon and today it was very windy - 40-60 mph. We also continued to climb in altitude all day

Some interesting factoids: domesticated animals, like llama, have more color variation than wild animals, which tend to be dun colored. In other words, you can find dark brown llama, but only sand colored vichuña.

We had lunch along road side within view of Colorado lagoon: Quinoa salad Mushroom soup and Tea

The Lagoon was beautiful and there were many flamingos, mostly grouped around the warm water intakes.

At about 5 pm we finally arrived at the lodge. Each of the three lodges for the atraversa are the same construction. They were designed by the Chilean architect Max Núñez, whose objective was to build a light place, small in size and low in height, to raise awareness of the territory and generate the minimum impact. For this reason, they were assembled in a 100% prefabricated and modular way.

There were four guests at the lodge - Chris, I, the two Brazilian ladies from Atacama. They are leaving tomorrow and we are staying an extra night. We all ate together with the guides:

Potato soup

Roasted chicken

Hearts of palm salad

Roasted peppers

Sautéed vegetables

Desert: chocolate soup

Chris and I are feeling the altitude- headache, stuffy nose, and muscle aches. It is very dry- we have a humidifier in the room, but I'm not sure it does much good.

The moon was almost full.

The wind continued howling through the night.